Christiern Pedersen

Christiern Pedersen (c. 1480 – 16 January 1554) was a Danish canon, humanist scholar, writer, printer and publisher.

Education

Christiern Pedersen was born in Helsingør, Denmark. He was schooled in Roskilde and studied from 1496 at the University of Greifswald. He received a baccalaureate degree in 1498 and from 1505 was a canon at Lund Cathedral.

He studied at the University of Paris from 1508 to 1515, where in 1511 he received a Master of Arts degree. During his stay in Paris he developed an interest in writing, translating and publishing. At that time Paris was the undisputed capital of the still-new printing press. While considering writing a new Latin-Danish lexicon, he wrote a replacement for the 300-year-old Latin grammar, Doctrinale, written in 1199 by Alexander of Villedieu, and still used as standard in the schools of Denmark at that time. In 1510 he published his new Latin-Danish lexicon, called Vocabularium ad usum Dacorum.

Gesta Danorum

He wanted to re-publish the huge 300-year-old chronicle of Denmark, Gesta Danorum, written by Saxo Grammaticus, but he did not know the location of the original manuscript. At that time the most knowledge of this work came from a summary called Compendium Saxonis located in Chronica Jutensis, dated about 1342. Undoubtedly this is also how Pedersen knew of it.